3 ms·

One has to be intimately acquaintaned with the field to be able to recognize if you are original in the first place. This was what I was taught in school.

DocTomoe 5y ago
The whole concept of "originality" does not make sense to me, tbh. Who cares? If you as a member of an isolated tribe in the amazon rainforest, with no contact to the outside world, come up with a movable-type-style contraption to impress patterns onto woven cloth, that's a creative thought - and your fellow tribe would consider it "original", even though you do not know that a few hundred years earlier, some guy in central Europe had that idea before (and some Chinese guy even earlier). You are in no way less an inventor if you come up with something that has been thought of before, but forgotten. We should start celebrating creativity (new ideas) instead of originality (uniquely new ideas). The quest for proving or disproving prior art is ultimately not moving us as a society forward.
- the-dude 5y ago
  Sure, everybody should get a prize.
  - tom_ 5y ago
    People respond to incentives!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dTal 5y ago
  Not to mention that someone having "thought of that" at some prior point isn't a good reason not to explore it from your own perspective; your predecessors were not perfect or all-knowing.
- ffhhj 5y ago
  > Who cares? > If you as a member of an isolated tribe in the amazon rainforest... Actually, there is a creativity's dark side that could makes us care. Members of a tribe will perform their gathering and hunting tasks, and achieve some degree of creativity on tools, organization and processes to optimize their resources and live happily. Creativity is nice up to this point. Now imagine what happens when they create this powerful idea, of building a pyramid of ash, so they burn all the trees around. And this have actually happened on different cultures. Behold our pyramid of ash: consumerism!

DocTomoe 5y ago

The whole concept of "originality" does not make sense to me, tbh. Who cares? If you as a member of an isolated tribe in the amazon rainforest, with no contact to the outside world, come up with a movable-type-style contraption to impress patterns onto woven cloth, that's a creative thought - and your fellow tribe would consider it "original", even though you do not know that a few hundred years earlier, some guy in central Europe had that idea before (and some Chinese guy even earlier). You are in no way less an inventor if you come up with something that has been thought of before, but forgotten. We should start celebrating creativity (new ideas) instead of originality (uniquely new ideas). The quest for proving or disproving prior art is ultimately not moving us as a society forward.

the-dude 5y ago
Sure, everybody should get a prize.
- tom_ 5y ago
  People respond to incentives!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dTal 5y ago
Not to mention that someone having "thought of that" at some prior point isn't a good reason not to explore it from your own perspective; your predecessors were not perfect or all-knowing.
ffhhj 5y ago
> Who cares? > If you as a member of an isolated tribe in the amazon rainforest... Actually, there is a creativity's dark side that could makes us care. Members of a tribe will perform their gathering and hunting tasks, and achieve some degree of creativity on tools, organization and processes to optimize their resources and live happily. Creativity is nice up to this point. Now imagine what happens when they create this powerful idea, of building a pyramid of ash, so they burn all the trees around. And this have actually happened on different cultures. Behold our pyramid of ash: consumerism!